Zak wrote:Apparently, the Russians won't bid on the contract. At least, so they say.
Russia denied on Monday that its state-run United Aviation Corporation (UAC) planned to bid for a $50 billion contract to replace the U.S. Air Force's fleet of air tankers, rivalling Boeing Co and Europe's EADS.
...
UAC denied it had held any talks on bidding for the contract. "We have not been holding, are not holding and are not planning to hold such talks," said a UAC official.
Full source:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE6 ... arketsNews
Same story from RIA Novosti...
http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20100322/158276984.htmlRussia's United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) said on Monday it does not plan to enter a lucrative contract to replace the U.S. Air Force's fleet of aerial tankers.
John Kirkland, a U.S. lawyer, told various news media last week that UAC would announce a joint venture on Monday with a small U.S. defense contractor to enter the bidding for the $35-bln KC-X aerial tanker deal against Europe's EADS and Boeing Co.
"The company officially announces that the media reports referring to John Kirkland's statement about the UAC participation in the tender to deliver aerial tankers to the U.S. Air Force are false," the UAC said in a statement.
"The UAC does not plan either to take part in this tender or set up a joint venture [to build aerial tankers]," the statement quoted UAC President Alexey Fedorov as saying.
However, a couple of interesting stirs of the pot and salient points here....
Kirkland said in his announcement last Friday that the Russian participation in the KC-X tender was discussed during Hillary Clinton's meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week in Moscow.
He also said the KC-X could be based on a wide-body version of UAC's Il-96 aircraft.
But Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Kommersant newspaper on Monday that the issue had never been raised during the meeting. Medvedev's spokeswoman Natalia Timakova also denied the rumor.
The UAC source suggested that the announcement made by Kirkland could be an attempt to heat up the competition and use the Russian company as a back-up participant in the tender in case Boeing remains the sole bidder.
Russian aircraft industry and military experts agree that even if Russia took part in the tender it would be unlikely to win because the Il-96 is inferior to comparable Boeing and EADS aircraft and Russia's aircraft industry does not have the capacity to produce 179 planes of this class "in the foreseeable future."
The Kommersant business daily cited a Russian aircraft industry analyst, Oleg Panteleyev, as saying that "the Americans have never bought and would never buy Russian-made military equipment."
I wouldn't go that far.
Our military is flying foreign-built aircraft right now and the fact that a foreign-built aircraft was even being considered for this bid tell me we're open to almost anything if not today then most likely in the future. Besides, the Russians are our friends now, right?
Panteleyev said that even the titanium that Boeing buys in Russia is used to build civilian aircraft.
That's what Kelly Johnson must have been telling them in the early 60's, too!
Both Russian and Western analysts agree, in general, that the deal is unrealistic, primarily for political reasons.
Can't argue with that one.
Slider... <sniff, sniff>... you stink.
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